Alternatives to the Role Actions System?

[Sylvain]

I don't think the problem comes from the system itself but from some choice made.

Most job currently have a big disparity between good choice, useless choice and mandatory leaving most job with very little choice.

There is basically either too not enough good choice, or (specifically for healers), too many things are just a no brainer living no room foor customization.

Tank have probably the best choice so far since the only skill they actually need (on most fight at least), is Provoke for tank swap.

But then, when we look at the gain some skill are clear winner over others. Too many skill are just too situationnal to be concidered"good" out of a specific fight (Like Awareness and Interject for OS3 for instance).

So once we remove the niche fight. We end up with the same 5 skills on most tanks.
Provoke, Rampart, Convaslescence, Reprisal, Shirk/something else.


Same goes for healers.
LucidDream and Protect are just too good to not be taken, Swiftcast is somewhat mandatory if you want to be able to rez and of course Esuna for the few fight that require it.
Then you have the "always good" Largesse.
Once that done you're left with actually very little choice. E4E is too random and will only work well on a few fight. Surecast is very situational (which is fine), Rescue could be cool if the person you'd pull in wouldn't always die because of the delay.
Then there is break which is always useless (even in Solo) and Cleric Stance which is just... lame.

DPS somewhat suffer the same issue than Tank, there are only 5/6 good choice, which in the end means there's no proper choice.



In order to make this system the way it was intended,
first they need to make all truly mandatory skills baseline (notably Provoke, Esuna. Although it's not absolutely mandatory I'd add lucid dream)
Then, they need to make new skills or somewhat rework currently existing skill in a way that doesn't force the player to get a specific skill.

For instance, Swiftcast is notably taken to get instant rez (spare BLM). Assuming there would be other interesting choices, if they'd make rez instant (they could add a 1min CD to the skill to compensate i dunno), then Swiftcast would loose a lot of its appeal.


There is a limited amount of things you can do in term of situational skills.
For instance, anything that could substantially increase a dps' dps can't really be added because it would make the skill mandatory, and as far as i'm concerned, the point of this system to give you some choice and way to personalise.

Another thing that could be done would be to instead of adding skills, adding traits.

For instance
These spells are now baseline: Esuna, Protect, Lucid Dream

Healer

Improved Ressurection - [Skill] : Ressurect a dead player (no weakened state), 360sec, instant, 3600mana

Swift Resurection - [Trait] : Ressurection cast time is reduced to 3sec.

Cleric Stance: - [Skill] Increase damage by 5% and reduce damaging spell mana cost by 50%, last 15sec, 90sec CD

Improved Lucid Dream - [Trait] : Lucid Dream cooldown is reset upon death.

Eye for an Eye - [Skill] :Increase healing received proportionally to the missing health. Up to 100%. Last 10sec. 90sec CD
hp - heal bonus
100% - 0%
75% - 25%
50% - 50%
25% - 75%
1% - 100% (gl there)

Justification:
These proposition are highly situational and most importantly, group/player dependant.
Improved Resurection is nice in farm group or when you're close to down a boss.
If you're learning a boss and people overall keep dying, then it is not a really good skill. Perhaps Swift resurection would be better.
Then again, Swift resurection would be a non interesting skill if your party, overall, has no one dying. (like any farm group should)

Improved Lucid Dream is again, a very nice skill for progression if you keep dying because you're struggling with the fight. It's a rather bad trait if you simply never die.

The mana cost reduction on cleric stance is to make the talent more interesting. Honestly, 5% dps increase is hardly worth it. At least with the mana cost reduction it can be used for high AoE moment. This could be a rather interesting choice for dungeons.

E4E could be more reliable.Most fight have hard tank buster, this could be a useful spell to help bringing back a tank up. There are quite a few fight where increase the healing done by an ogcd would be very nice.

Most are highly " progression oriented ", but this is pretty much my point, by giving more good choice that are not simply fight dependant but also skill / group dependant, you could see more variation.
I don't think it is possible to make 10-15skills perfectly balanced and good in all situation. However I do believe making skill optimised for specific tast / moment could work fine.


Tank

Swift Stance [Trait] - Stance are now out of the GCD but get a 15sec CD.

Ultimate Sacrifice [Skill] - Heal the target for up to 50% of your maximum HP. Reduce your HP by half of the healing done. Instant. 120sec

Improved Provoke - [Trait] - Provoke also generate half your health as enmity to the target.

Last Stand - [Skill] - You defy death. You automatically resurrect after 5sec in a weakened state with half your maximum health. 10sec duration. 600sec recast

Justification: Again mostly progression skills. Yet again, some group / player could hihgly benefit from these skills instead of the current one. Ultimate sacrifice could ease a tank buster, or perhaps your healer died and the MT is getting low?



Caster

Drain [Skill] - Potency 100 - Same as before except that the heal can heal around 30% of your maximum health. Instant - 30sec recast

[B]Etherical Come back - [Trait] - Reduce the duration of Weakened State by 1min and reset all your skill upon death. 600sec CD

I don't have much idea for the melee and range.
But you get the idea.

[DRKoftheAzure]

snip

Tanks have at least 3 mandatory abilities, depending on job though it may be more, for DRK, Provoke/Ultimatum/Shirk are all interchangeable, Anticipation, Reprisal, Low Blow, Interject, Rampart, and Convalescence are mandatory because there is nothing better for mitigation and utility so that bumps up to 5+ and when DRK needs more than 5 to make up for lack of mitigation and utility, it is a sign that tank balance NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED NOW.


PLD has a built in stun still but no longer has a built in silence, and doesn't need Anticipation even though Bulwark is not always reliable, and Reprisal originally belonged to DRK, so PLD is at 3-4 mandatory depending on the situation.


WAR requires Awareness due to Raw Intuition and Ultimatum with Provoke since WAR can no longer get Flash, so that's bumped to 5 mandatory(this going by theme of jobs)

Healers have 1 interchangeable action BUT ONLY AFTER YOU ENTER A DUNGEON/RAID/TRIAL, which makes Esuna decent mandatory spell because you never know when you need it, making Largesse, Eye for an Eye, and Lucid Dreaming mandatory which leaves Rescue, Swiftcast and Surecast interchangeable for last slot.


DPS are locked to 4 mandatory(Physical Ranged and melee 5 mandatory if they do not trust healer) meaning last slot goes to something that is interchangeable based on job and theme.


I think cross-class was better since it tried to get players to try out new classes but at the same time jobs only allowed 2 classes to be selected from an already limited selection to help perform their role better, just needed more classes and class actions to choose from as well as the job unlocking those actions as soon as they hit the required level similar to role action, so 2 steps forward-1 step back overall...